Polymer or hydrogel-coated substrates are used in many technological applications. For example, implantable medical devices can be coated with biologically inert polymers. In another example, polymer or hydrogel coated substrates are used for the preparation and/or analysis of biological molecules. Molecular analyses, such as certain nucleic acid sequencing methods, rely on the attachment of nucleic acid strands to a polymer or hydrogel-coated surface of a substrate. The sequences of the attached nucleic acid strands can then be determined by a number of different methods that are well known in the art.
In certain Sequencing-by-Synthesis (“SBS”) processes, one or more surfaces of a flow cell are coated with a polymer or a hydrogel to which primers (single stranded DNA or ssDNA) are then grafted. However, there is an inherent cost associated with performing the coating, grafting and quality control steps.